Running Windows 8.1 Preview? Get the latest Patch Tuesday fixes right now

We’re big fans of Windows 8.1 Preview and highly recommend doing a “clean install”, if you can spare the time and effort. Indeed, personally speaking I’m running it on four devices: Acer R7, Surface Pro, Dell XPS One 27, Acer W3 and Samsung ATIV 500T. Wait, that’s five devices….

Anywho, if you are running next-generation OS from Microsoft, which will RTM in August, you’ll want to force-check for today’s updates, which include four 8.1 updates:

KB2863147 – Fixes a license notification issue. Basically Microsoft migrates your Windows 8 license to 8.1 and this will make sure it doesn’t expire and that you can still upgrade to the final Windows 8.1

Reader comments

Running Windows 8.1 Preview? Get the latest Patch Tuesday fixes right now

Got 8.1 installed and noticed that my Skydrive files for the last two months dissappeared. Found a hidden folder called skydrive.old and found at least one missing file there.
Additionally, I made all the files available offline (BIG MISTAKE!!) and it immediately overwhelmed my c drive (program files only drive supposedly) and I now have a catastrophic failuer on my skydrive!!!
Any suggestions send them to me at dglosup@sbcglobal.net. Dell was unable to assist other than to help me move the .old folder to my D drive, so now at least I have some space on C.
I am unable to make the documents folder in skydrive on-line only again but WAS able to get the other two good (public and pics)
I think if I can configure skydrive to use D instead of C, all will be well.
Help!!
Dean

If you follow the instruction here, then you should be able to get it running on Windows RT 8.1. WARNING: Make sure to create a USB recovery flash drive. To be safe, I created two USB recovery flash drive and deleting the recovery information AFTER the second USB recovery drive is created.

Yay!! A little persistance pays off!! Before I went to 8.1 I created a USB recovery drive in case I wanted to go back to 8.0. While I was on pthe phone with Dell Tech Support(which sucks BTW) the recovery process worked this time around.

So, installed the updates, asked me to reboot so I did. Dell XPS 10 won't boot back up (plugged in, USB with recovery in, power + volume up, power + volume down) nothing working. If I have to send it back in I think I'll just return it for good. I returned my first XPS 10 because 32 GB of storage was useless for storage (no, I didn't sink another $50 in an SD card yet).
I love Windows 8 and I'm completely addicted to OneNote on a tablet but this is frustrating!

Anybody here with a surface pro started having wifi issues after updating to Win 8.1 preview? I never had wifi issues with my pro but after updating to 8.1 I started having "limited connectivity" issues. I tried rolling back the wifi driver to previous versions but that did not fix the issue. I was forced to revert back to 8.0 which was easy enough to do (just do a refresh).

I had issue with 8 indexing my music , now With 8.1 problem gone but I can't use my midi controllers . My traktor f1 and S2 are no longer recognized when I plug in the USB , my audio6 sound card works , but my midi controllers now say incompatible.

How did you get the 8.1 Preview installed on the Ativ 500T? I have tried a few times and always get the message that I need to update a component using Windows Update before installing the 8.1 Preview...the 8.1 website says that the newer Atom processors need a display driver update to install the preview. Did you get that from somewhere?

Even after all these patches I still find it mega glitchy. Tiles randomly disappearing, video app constantly crashing, apps being reinstalled from my other PC even after turning the setting off - delete it and its back the next day. And the biggest pain is if I turn on syncing my tile layout and lay it all out on my surface, it totally messrs up tiles on my bigger PC screen - gaps all over the place. From how glitchy it feels, I was surprised to hear its going to rtm next month. In saying that, I'm loving it and all the changes and can't wait for rtm. My biggest issue is internet explorer, seems to break so many sites

I did two upgrade installs the second went a little smoother as it didn't leave a windows.old and kep most everything perfect. One thing MS needs to do though is remove SkyDrive desktop app and auto select sync all files and make some sort of easy to distinguish sync icon on the start screen. Otherwise I love 8.1. Any news on 8.2?

Maybe you should stop using Preview/Beta versions of software if you want stability. and just wait for the actual RTM version, if this version didn't have any kind of bug, im sure it would be RTM and not a preview version :)

I'll try this out when I get home, hopefully it helps. Will update when I get it done.

EDIT: Just did it - fixed my IE11 problem at least. I wonder if there's some sort of Windows wide smooth scrolling or something? I still have that jitteryness on my start screen and everything. Very annoying...

Same here. Not sure why this isn't more widespread, maybe more users are using touchscreens instead, so they don't really experience the frustration of this. I've tried it with the built in Synaptics Touchpad, two Microsoft Mice (Arc Touch and Touch), and also my Logitech k400 wireless keyboard, everything has horrible scrolling except for IE and desktop apps.

1. It doesnt detect my Lumia 920 when connected via USB (I know this will eventually get fixed)
2. Photos app does not integrate Skydrive, Facebook and Flikr photos (major disappointment) and from the chat going on in the microsoft support forums, looks like the RTM version may also lack this support.

Other than these issues, I'm loving 8.1RT so far (quite a few visible improvements for my usecases so far, biggest being ability to add SD card to media library directly, without having to mount it, and performance improvements in the photos app - much quicker at indexing and displaying newly added photos), and cant wait for devs to take advantage of the new features.

It didn't recognize my 822 either at first, but it started working after fooling around with the SD... but the 920 doesn't have an SD so...
Also the photo app only shows about 2 of my 12 folders with photos in them and when selected the folders are empty. Similar to the Xbox Music app not showing any of my collection.
Actually, being on a non-touch desktop, I avoid the Start screen apps as much as possible.

"Fixes a license notification issue" - hopefully they don't mess up migrating users from win8 to win 8.1 final version. I upgraded my new win8 laptop to Win8.1 preview and would be really pissed off if they say I am not eligible for an 8.1 upgrade!
Overall I am very happy with Win8.1. It looks even better with those animated desktop and new tile sizes. IE11 is even faster and machine boots up faster. The only issue I had was with my wifi.

On new win8 laptops your product key is injected into the mobo, that means you could delete your hard drive or whatever you want and windows will not ask you for a product key when you reinstall. No worries about upgrading!

As a developer I'm a bit discouraged that so many core things have changed that cause issue with existing 8.0 apps. They are all for the better ultimately, like Grid and List View rendering, but being unable to publish 8.1 versions of apps that work great on 8, but break or degrade on 8.1 feels frustrating. Allowing early submission of 8.1 apps would make a huge difference.

Understood, but the result is apps that don't work correctly on 8.1, and no way to have 8.1 ready apps available when 8.1 goes live. Seems strange, especially since we were able to publish during 8.0 prerelease if approved. Right now we have had to go back with warnings in many apps that essentially say: "Here's some things you'll notice that don't work, or now have degraded performance" if you are running 8.1. :/

Quite honestly, given the number of API improvements, usability improvements, and the fact that it's free... you'd have to be dumb to NOT upgrade. In fact, if I were Julie Larson-Green, I'd declare it a mandatory upgrade much the same as a service pack.

Come to think of it, I've seen service packs break apps in the past too, so this really isn't that different or catastrophic.

I have no problem with having improvements "break" things. 8.1 is a better upgrade. I have a problem with Microsoft not allowing developers to submit 8.1 updates to their apps to take advantage of them, leaving them broken until post-release. See the difference?

Search is the only bad thing about 8.1, just like win7 search was not that great. 8.1 is going back to how the suckysuck way 7 worked. that would be my only complain, which i dont think it will change in RTM. but I will just not use it like i didnt use it in 7.

8.1 has a lot of great improvements but the music app has major issues on 1 of our Surfii it won't even run after the update. It constantly freezes and crashes. Anyone else run into this? Looking forward to RTM and hopefully public availability in August.

It depends on how you installed 8.1, but that was the fifth update today that apparently didn't apply to Daniel's PC and some other people's: there was no notice anywhere that this was an evaluation that would eventually expire, so they added that via an update.

wow... really? is it your first time with a beta version?
yeah it says that... its an evaluation copy and not a RTM release. none forced you to upgrade, stop crying over something that has always been there in beta versions. there are some ways to remove it, if you dont know how to... well its not Microsoft problem.

people who didn't get the watermark, should be thankful they didn't get it before.